Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

synopsis

Patrice Lumumba became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo in 1960. The following year, he was executed in a coup engineered by Western powers. Lumumba's fate is intertwined with the stories of legendary jazzmen such as Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong. Their music served as a smokescreen for the activities of governments seeking to suppress the Pan-African movement and maintain Western hegemony. With a relaxed jazz beat and a sense of historical irony, director Johan Grimonprez assembles a carefully edited collage of interviews, archival footage and sound recordings. Filling in the white spaces on the map of the Cold War, he is particularly attentive to the links between colonialism and the media.

“It is called Soundtrack for a reason. Because when I listened to the material, then it really directs where you head with the story. A lot of the political agency is also set forth by music.”

Quote source: Modern Times Review

biography

Johan Grimonprez (1962) is a Belgian filmmaker, multimedia artist and curator. He studied photography and mixed media at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent and later received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He first achieved international recognition with Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997).

more about film

director:	Johan Grimonprez
producer:	Daan Milius, Rémi Grellety
script:	Johan Grimonprez
photography:	Jonathan Wannyn
editing:	Rik Chaubet
sound:	Alek Goosse
sound design:	Ranko Pauković
co-producer:	Katja Draaijer, Frank Hoeve

contact

Aïda Aziz / Mediawan
aaziz@mediawan.com